Ubisoft Dev Discusses Future of Assassin's Creed

Ubisoft is planning on more than a decade of the pervasive Assassin's Creed franchise, and wants to have more robust modern-day sections in future entries.

During a recent community stream, lead writer Darby McDevitt said the studio has hundreds of years of in-game lore planned for Assassin's Creed, along with an extensive history to explain its origins.

"We've created 500, 600, 700 years worth of history that we hope to start teasing out for the next 10, 20 years or however long we're around," McDevitt said. "I particularly love the lore. I've been working the past two years, with all the other writers, on getting a great document together on the First Civilization."

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The aforementioned civilization is the group of precursor beings often shown in the series. Many of the Assassin's Creed storylines goes back to that early faction, and players learn more about them as the franchise progresses, often in modern-day scenes.

McDevitt said the plan is to use existing material in order to focus on that present-day storyline. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, for example, used assets from its predecessor in order to create an immersive setting for the modern narrative.

"That only came about because [we] were able to reuse Monteriggioni from Assassin's Creed 2," McDevitt said. "So the future –– and this is the plan –– is to smartly reuse things so we can have a more robust modern day."

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Assassin's Creed Unity had less modern-day sequences than Ubisoft originally planned, McDevitt said. But they needed to be weighed with the historical setting of Unity, which is often the most alluring aspect of each new release –– in this case, revolutionary France.

"We always plan to have more modern day but we have to be really smart about how we do it," he said. "There was a plan for a little more modern day in Unity –– a plan. Nothing that was actually cut."